


Scandal of the Century

by matchsticks



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Friendship, Gen, M/M, Yuletide Treat, friends with benefits without benefits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 03:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1101820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchsticks/pseuds/matchsticks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sex is awful. Or: GOB learns a surprising lesson about friends, vis-a-vis whether one has to bang them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scandal of the Century

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foolishle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolishle/gifts).



The sex is awful every time they have it, with or without masks. One morning, after GOB literally sprints to the bathroom to dry heave, run a cold shower, and cry, not necessarily in that order, Michael puts down his coffee and suggests, in his mildly passive aggressive Michaely way, "Maybe you should stop trying to make yourself like gay sex when you have no interest in it."

Michael has become the sort of sad sack who breaks into Tony's house just so he can drink coffee without feeling completely alone every morning, so GOB isn't so sure he should take his advice on anything, especially how to have sex. 

"Don't you have a son you should be giving gay sex advice to? Oh wait, he won't speak to you, because you're a...you're a..." GOB knows he started that burn strong, but he can't think of how to finish strong and he really just wants a drink of water to wash that taste out of his mouth.

Michael just rolls his eyes. "Keep doing it if you want. I know you don't actually want to, but you want to keep pretending you do, so keep pretending if you want."

"Okay, I don't understand what you just said, but here's the thing...I _want_ to keep hanging out with him."

"So just hang out with him. Without involving your penises."

"I don't understand," GOB repeats.

"Just be friends," Michael says, like that's any clearer.

GOB laughs. "What are you talking about? You either have sex or you stop seeing someone and they disappear from your life forever. Or you're related to them, I guess. And then you don't have sex but they still refuse to go away." He looks at Michael pointedly.

Michael ignores his exquisitely nuanced look. "Or, you could be friends, and enjoy each other's company and see them regularly but you don't have sex."

"How?"

Michael finally has the good grace to look embarrassed. "Well, I mean, I..."

"You don't know, do you? You've _heard_ that that's what people can do, but you don't have any friends, and I don't have any friends, and for all we know that's just something normal people have made up to trick us."

"Oh, GOB," Michael says with deep pity, but GOB isn't the one sitting in his brother's lover's kitchen drinking lukewarm coffee by himself because no one else will talk to him, so who cares.

GOB stomps his way back to Tony's bedroom to find him gagging into a paper bag. Maybe Michael has a point.

"Is the sex bad for you?" GOB asks, even though the answer is obvious.

"No, baby, it's just..." Tony Wonder cannot think of a positive way to spin 'hideously wretched.'

"We have zero sexual chemistry," GOB continues. "I think maybe we should stop trying to force it.

"But I like you so much and I don't want to stop seeing you!" Tony looks like he's going to cry, and it makes GOB want to dry heave again but in an entirely different way, so he brings up Michael's insane suggestion.

"What if we keep hanging out, but we just don't have sex?"

"We can do that??"

"Yeah. It's called being friends or something."

"But don't you have sex with friends?"

"That's what I said!" GOB says, sitting on the bed cross-legged. He and Tony so get each other. "But apparently you can go out to dinner together and watch tv and talk and stuff, but you don't have to have sex after if you don't want to."

"That sounds so..."

"Nice," GOB says, at the same time Tony says "scandalous."

They pause in a comfortable silence and just sit together on the bed. GOB has to admit that he likes Tony a lot more with clothes on. If they can be together in bed but wearing all their clothes, everything in his life would basically be perfect.

"You think it would be nice?" Tony asks tentatively.

GOB nods.

"Well, Tony Wonder does love a scandal," he muses. "Imagine if we let the whole world believe you're my lover and we're actually pulling their leg, but they'll never know if we are or we aren't. That's pretty exciting."

GOB smiles.


End file.
